Shining New Year
by McGonagall's Bola
Summary: New Year in Miami, with Horatio's team. -REWRITTEN!


BETA READ by _LA Calleigh_

* * *

A gentle smile appeared on Maxine Valera's lips as she handed Calleigh and Horatio a glass of dark red wine each. The two had gotten in a conversation about the latest developments in the field of forensic science and the differences with the times since the two of them had started at CSI. In the times before Horatio, there hadn't been much achieved in any of it. He had known and experienced nearly every single improvement in that field.

Eric contemplated and followed their talk with a smile on his face, amused, but there was some kind of underlying sorrow as well. Speed would have joined in on the conversation, first sharing his opinion with the others, and then telling everyone to just shut up about work and have fun. That's what he would have normally done.

The team used to celebrate every New Years together, and it was just awkward that, after all those years, he wasn't there anymore. He was always there with his many silly jokes, and although it actually wasn't the first New Year without him, everyone's feelings about it just stayed the same. The awkwardness about the holidays without Speed stayed. He still should have been with them.

It was also hard to think about the fact Alexx was gone. Although she always used to spend the holidays with her family, at that particular moment, all those feelings of missing loved ones came up all over again.

Eric didn't really get too much of a chance to dwell on it, though, for Ryan handed him a glass of wine, pulling him out of his thoughts.

They sat there, all six of them single, but with an invisible bond among them that was unbreakable. They all smiled, laughed, danced, drank and had fun. If there was something great about the holidays, it would be spending it with the people you loved, and who loved you right back.

Eric and Ryan put their glasses of New Years wine down on the table in unison, first trading a mischievous glance with each other, before respectively taking Natalia's and Valera's hand and pulling them along with them on the dance floor, leaving Calleigh and Horatio behind with each other.

The lieutenant seemed to be lost in thought, looking at some point in the distance, but without really looking at it at the same time. At first, Calleigh just left him thinking, gently observing him from her spot beside him as he did so, but the longer his absentmindedness lasted, the more worried she became.

"What's on your mind, handsome?" she asked ever so softly, a warm hand reaching out to lay on top of his and squeezing it, very gently. When she didn't get any reaction from him, she tried for a second time. "Handsome?" she repeated, worry and concern shadowing as the emotions behind the nickname she had given him such a very long time ago already, taking over.

"What?" Horatio looked up at his ballistics expert.

"What's wrong?" she asked, the glance in her bright green emeralds nearly begging him to be honest with her, but still... He wasn't.

"Nothing," the redhead replied her with his velvet-like rumble, lying.

Calleigh sighed. Just like her superior, she wasn't the one to be fooled, especially about anything like that in particular. "Horatio..." she whispered, as his eyes wandered off to look at four of his employees, dancing on the rhythm of the music, and just having fun. "Horatio?" He turned his gaze back to the southern belle sitting beside him, making eye-contact. "Please don't lie to me."

"I'm not."

The ballistics expert slowly inhaled. "My parents used to allow me and my brothers to drink some wine or cider on New Years Eve. It was the one time a year we could," she recalled. "We used to watch a movie together and me and my brothers could stay up late if we wanted to." A smile appeared on the blonde's lips as she thought back on her childhood memories. She didn't have too many of happy memories from her childhood, and most of those had already faded over time. The female CSI took a little sip from her glass of wine before continuing. Horatio unconsciously followed her example.

"When my parents got divorced... It turned our whole lives upside down. Everything. Nothing was still as it used to be. And although my brothers and I had reached the age where we preferred going out with our friends instead of spending New Years with our family back then, we really missed those nights. Those nights when all four of us were still little, and only family truly counted. We often told each other how we missed…" Her words trailed off in thin air.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"It was more difficult for me than it was for my brothers; it was very different for them than for me. I'm an... afterthought, used to be my parents' little girl and therefore spoiled rotten. And then all of this was just gone. I was forced to become more independent. Which is probably the main reason for me still wanting to be so independent."

She swallowed any more words as the other team members neared the table to take a gulp from their glasses of mulled wine, Glühwein in German-speaking countries, and Glögg in Swedish, and then just went off again, to dance. Eric was the last one to return to the dance floor. "Come on, Calleigh," he tried.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she said, after shaking her blond head. Neither Eric or Horatio missed her pouring the whole volume of her glass down her throat before making her way to the ladies' room, disappearing.

Calleigh Duquesne looked at her own reflection through the mirror: her long, straight blond hair, her sparkling bluish green eyes, her orangish red lips... Her bright green depths caught the silver necklace she had gotten from her father as a thank-you present – one of the many, unfortunately. She reached out to touch it and noticed the ring she had just refused to take off for more than ten years already.

The ring was just an average pure silver one with a little diamond. It had been her late grandmother's, which was the major reason for her not wanting to take it off. Her grandmother had died two days after she had given Calleigh the ring.

She exhaled a very long breath and reached for her purse to take her carbon black mascara. When the southern belle was pleased with the result, she took out her gleaming lip gloss and applied it. As she did so, she noticed the dial of her watch indicating only a minute before midnight, so she decided to get back to the others to celebrate the new year.

They had already started counting down as Calleigh found them. "Four... Three... Two... One... HAPPY 2009!"

Everyone went to give one another a tight hug. Calleigh and Horatio remained the last ones hugging each other. "No single New Years is the same," Horatio whispered in her ear, softly caressing her back, explaining both their actions with those seven simple words.

"True."


End file.
